James Delahunty
3 Dec 2005 14:02
Yet another lawsuit has been filed against Sony concerning the XCP DRM software created by UK-based First4Internet. The lawsuit was filed by legal firm Finkelstein, Thompson & Loughran for a resident of the District of Columbia on behalf of the general public of the capital. 52 CD titles contain XCP copy protection, Digital Rights Management technology that is intended to protect Sony's intellectual property by limiting copies being made of the music.
"By surreptitiously encoding its CDs with XCP and MediaMax software for the purported purpose of securing its intellectual property, Sony has endangered the security of personal information for computer users throughout the District of Columbia. To date, nearly 5 million copies of the XCP encoded CDs, and nearly 20 million of the MediaMax encoded CDs, have been sold," the legal firm stated.
"District of Columbia residents have played these disks on their personal computers and thus have had their systems unwittingly compromised. To date, several viruses have been reported that exploit the weakness that was created by the surreptitious installation of the spyware on their computers. Consumers are at risk from these and future viruses that will destroy software and steal personal information."
Today we added XCP (Extended Copy Protection) to our Glossary section. It contains more information on XCP, how it works, the legal issues surrounding it, list of the infected CDs etc. You can view it at: https://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/xcp.cfm
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Source:
SC Magazine